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18(a) Describe the mission/purpose of your proposed gTLD

gTLDFull Legal NameE-mail suffixDetail
.club.CLUB DOMAINS, LLCdotclub.comView
Mission and Purpose

This response provides an overview of our mission and purpose. It is supplemented by further detail in the responses in questions 45-50 which quantify our assumptions and goals relative to the ‘most likely’ projection and addresses contingencies in the ‘worst case’ projection to deliver on our mission and purpose. Following is an overview of the following areas;

- Business Goals,
- Mission and Purpose,
- About .CLUB,
- Strategic Overview, and
- Market Need, Size and Character.

Business Goals
Secure the leadership position, providing domain registration and web service offerings to club niche markets, delivering indispensable value to clubs and strong returns for investors.

Mission and Purpose
.CLUB Domains, LLC d⁄b⁄a .CLUB is a new company entering the Domain Name Registry and Web Service space with a mission to provide domain registration and relevant EASY-TO-USE web services to meet the online needs of clubs, similar societies and associations of all types and sizes.

- .CLUB will provide services to the highest service level in the domain registry space and as such will be known for our professional management, customer care excellence and service performance.

- .CLUB will deliver niche-focused web services designed to help clubs establish engaging and effective online club membership experiences.

- .CLUB will foster innovation to help clubs grow and manage their membership base.

At .CLUB we help your club;
1. Secure a great domain name
2. Grow club membership
3. Improve member involvement and value
4. Reduce management costs


About .CLUB
.CLUB DOMAINS, LLC is a Fort Lauderdale, Florida based company formed for the purpose of becoming the “.CLUB” registry. We intend to become the leading provider of relevant easy-to-use web services to club markets. The Company is founded by a proven successful Internet entrepreneur, Colin Campbell.

An Internet pioneer since 1993, Mr. Campbell, built several Internet companies including; Tucows Interactive, Internet Direct Canada Inc. (merged with Look Communications in 1999), and Hostopia.com Inc. (IPO TSX: H in 2006 and sold to Deluxe Corporation in 2008).

Under Colin’s leadership, Hostopia.com established itself as the market leader in its space, delivering white-label web services to its communication service provider customers. Services included domain name services, hosting, email and web applications designed to meet the needs of small and medium sized businesses. Additionally, Hostopia operated several retail brands, selling directly to its’ markets. At the time of Colin’s departure, Hostopia hosted more than 500,000 websites, served more than 4,500,000 email addresses and managed close to 1,000,000 domain names both as a registrar (through wholly owned subsidiary, Abacus of America) and as a reseller of registrar partners, including Tucows and Register.com.

Colin has been an active member of the Internet community in the past, serving as director for the Canadian Association of Internet Providers (CAIP), and the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA), and undertakes guest speaking engagements at a number of universities speaking on Entrepreneurship.

Colin’s leadership, entrepreneurial spirit and track record of success make him a compelling business leader. As a result, upon approval of the .CLUB TLD application, Colin will bring aboard an experienced leadership and operating team with many years of experience in the space. This team will form and help Colin realize the .CLUB DOMAINS, LLC mission and purpose.



Strategic Overview
The following provides an overview of .CLUB’s strategic approach to the market.

A CLUB is; a: an association of persons for some common object, usually jointly supported and meeting periodically; also : a group identified by some common characteristic b: the meeting place of a club c : an association of persons participating in a plan by which they agree to make regular payments or purchases in order to secure some advantage d : a nightclub e : an athletic association or team.

Market Need
Club membership communities share common interests, band together to a common purpose, provide for their members a forum for the expression and sharing of ideas, coordination and management of events, launch of membership programs and provide services to serve their Club’s community of interests.

Today clubs do not have a gTLD that addresses their specific identity needs and are forced to select domain names which do not most accurately represent themselves. For example; BoyScouts of America could not select scouting.com since it is owned by a fantasy football organization. .CLUB will provide for these groups a unique and representative online address that is clearly recognized as a club entity. Similarly, there are no web service providers who offer a service suite that addresses specific club needs. Clubs must source various web services and adapt them to their club purpose. In summary, there is need for;

- Unique domain name identities for clubs, and
- Web service suite designed to address online club needs.

.CLUB - The Registry
First and foremost .CLUB is a Domain Registry business. We will focus to launch the registry and sell through established registrar channels, building upon our extensive experience and relationships in the industry. Second, we will establish the business as a registrar to facilitate the operation as a direct selling and servicing organization centered at www.my.club.

.CLUB - The Web Service Provider
Our vision includes the introduction and expansion of a niche focused web service suite over time, designed to serve the needs of club markets. Our mission is to make it EASY to help clubs set up and manage their club on the web, help them be discovered, deliver engaging functions for their membership, manage and grow their club.

.CLUB DOMAINS, LLC will always make domain name registrations available for purchase separately from any of our web service offerings.


Market Need, Size and Character
Club, similar society and association markets are considerable in number, dynamic in their state of evolution and diverse in their core purpose. What they have in common are people who share common interests, seek to share experiences, learn and benefit through their club memberships.

The niches in this market ecosystem for which our gTLD and value proposition is designed includes a number of club categories, including; 1. Social Clubs, 2. Sporting Clubs 3. Special Interest⁄Hobby Clubs, 4. Country Clubs 5. Buying Clubs, 6. Fraternities and Sororities, 7. Personal Clubs, 8. Professional Clubs, 9.School Clubs, 10. Service Clubs, and 11. Night Clubs.

In addressing each of these niches within the club market, we will employ various research methods through outreach to further quantify, characterize and profile members, obtain contacts and engage operators and members both through direct outreach and by promoting .CLUB online.

While the niches are diverse, their needs share common traits and it is to these needs we see a large underserved market need that we will design and deploy services. Further market need, size and character information and research supporting this plan are submitted in our response to Question 46.

In addition, we provide a description of our market approach and our operational approach for Sales, Marketing, Product and Customer Care in our response to Question 46.

In 18b and 18c we provide information and our vision of how .CLUB will promote competition, consumer trust and choice and how we intend to set policies, processes and practice safeguards to mitigate issues involved in the introduction and expansion of .CLUB.
gTLDFull Legal NameE-mail suffixDetail
.computerPine Mill, LLCdonuts.coView
Q18A CHAR: 7985

ABOUT DONUTS
Donuts Inc. is the parent applicant for this and multiple other TLDs. The company intends to increase competition and consumer choice at the top level. It will operate these carefully selected TLDs safely and securely in a shared resources business model. To achieve its objectives, Donuts has recruited seasoned executive management with proven track records of excellence in the industry. In addition to this business and operational experience, the Donuts team also has contributed broadly to industry policymaking and regulation, successfully launched TLDs, built industry-leading companies from the ground up, and brought innovation, value and choice to the domain name marketplace.

DONUTS’ PLACE WITHIN ICANN’S MISSION
ICANN and the new TLD program share the following purposes:
1. to make sure that the Internet remains as safe, stable and secure as possible, while
2. helping to ensure there is a vibrant competitive marketplace to efficiently bring the benefits of the namespace to registrants and users alike.

ICANN harnesses the power of private enterprise to bring forth these public benefits. While pursuing its interests, Donuts helps ICANN accomplish its objectives by:

1. Significantly widening competition and choice in Internet identities with hundreds of new top-level domain choices;
2. Providing innovative, robust, and easy-to-use new services, names and tools for users, registrants, registrars, and registries while at the same time safeguarding the rights of others;
3. Designing, launching, and securely operating carefully selected TLDs in multiple languages and character sets; and
4. Providing a financially robust corporate umbrella under which its new TLDs will be protected and can thrive.

ABOUT DONUTS’ RESOURCES
Donuts’ financial resources are extensive. The company has raised more than US$100 million from a number of capital sources including multiple multi-billion dollar venture capital and private equity funds, a top-tier bank, and other well-capitalized investors. Should circumstances warrant, Donuts is prepared to raise additional funding from current or new investors. Donuts also has in place pre-funded, Continued Operations Instruments to protect future registrants. These resource commitments mean Donuts has the capability and intent to launch, expand and operate its TLDs in a secure manner, and to properly protect Internet users and rights-holders from potential abuse.

Donuts firmly believes a capable and skilled organization will operate multiple TLDs and benefit Internet users by:

1. Providing the operational and financial stability necessary for TLDs of all sizes, but particularly for those with smaller volume (which are more likely to succeed within a shared resources and shared services model);
2. Competing more powerfully against incumbent gTLDs; and
3. More thoroughly and uniformly executing consumer and rights holder protections.

THIS TLD
This TLD is attractive and useful to end-users as it better facilitates search, self-expression, information sharing and the provision of legitimate goods and services. Along with the other TLDs in the Donuts family, this TLD will provide Internet users with opportunities for online identities and expression that do not currently exist. In doing so, the TLD will introduce significant consumer choice and competition to the Internet namespace – the very purpose of ICANN’s new TLD program.

This TLD is a generic term and its second level names will be attractive to a variety of Internet users. Making this TLD available to a broad audience of registrants is consistent with the competition goals of the New TLD expansion program, and consistent with ICANN’s objective of maximizing Internet participation. Donuts believes in an open Internet and, accordingly, we will encourage inclusiveness in the registration policies for this TLD. In order to avoid harm to legitimate registrants, Donuts will not artificially deny access, on the basis of identity alone (without legal cause), to a TLD that represents a generic form of activity and expression.

DONUTS’ APPROACH TO PROTECTIONS
No entity, or group of entities, has exclusive rights to own or register second level names in this TLD. There are superior ways to minimize the potential abuse of second level names, and in this application Donuts will describe and commit to an extensive array of protections against abuse, including protections against the abuse of trademark rights.

We recognize some applicants seek to address harms by constraining access to the registration of second level names. However, we believe attempts to limit abuse by limiting registrant eligibility is unnecessarily restrictive and harms users by denying access to many legitimate registrants. Restrictions on second level domain eligibility would prevent law-abiding individuals and organizations from participating in a space to which they are legitimately connected, and would inhibit the sort of positive innovation we intend to see in this TLD. As detailed throughout this application, we have struck the correct balance between consumer and business safety, and open access to second level names.

By applying our array of protection mechanisms, Donuts will make this TLD a place for Internet users that is far safer than existing TLDs. Donuts will strive to operate this TLD with fewer incidences of fraud and abuse than occur in incumbent TLDs. In addition, Donuts commits to work toward a downward trend in such incidents.

OUR PROTECTIONS
Donuts has consulted with and evaluated the ideas of international law enforcement, consumer privacy advocacy organizations, intellectual property interests and other Internet industry groups to create a set of protections that far exceed those in existing TLDs, and bring to the Internet namespace nearly two dozen new rights and protection mechanisms to raise user safety and protection to a new level.

These include eight, innovative and forceful mechanisms and resources that far exceed the already powerful protections in the applicant guidebook. These are:

1. Periodic audit of WhoIs data for accuracy;
2. Remediation of inaccurate Whois data, including takedown, if warranted;
3. A new Domain Protected Marks List (DPML) product for trademark protection;
4. A new Claims Plus product for trademark protection;
5. Terms of use that prohibit illegal or abusive activity;
6. Limitations on domain proxy and privacy service;
7. Published policies and procedures that define abusive activity; and
8. Proper resourcing for all of the functions above.

They also include fourteen new measures that were developed specifically by ICANN for the new TLD process. These are:

1. Controls to ensure proper access to domain management functions;
2. 24⁄7⁄365 abuse point of contact at registry;
3. Procedures for handling complaints of illegal or abusive activity, including remediation and takedown processes;
4. Thick WhoIs;
5. Use of the Trademark Clearinghouse;
6. A Sunrise process;
7. A Trademark Claims process;
8. Adherence to the Uniform Rapid Suspension system;
9. Adherence to the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy;
10. Adherence to the Post Delegation Dispute Resolution Policy;
11. Detailed security policies and procedures;
12. Strong security controls for access, threat analysis and audit;
13. Implementation DNSSEC; and
14. Measures for the prevention of orphan glue records.

DONUTS’ INTENTION FOR THIS TLD
As a senior government authority has recently said, “a successful applicant is entrusted with operating a critical piece of global Internet infrastructure.” Donuts’ plan and intent is for this TLD to serve the international community by bringing new users online through opportunities for economic growth, increased productivity, the exchange of ideas and information and greater self-expression.